Christ Appearing to Mary Magdalene, ‘Noli me tangere’

The story is from the Gospel of John. Mary Magdalene, first at the empty tomb on Easter morning, turns and takes the risen Christ for the garden's gardener before she knows him. Rembrandt paints exactly that confusion: his Christ wears a broad-brimmed hat and holds a spade, dressed as the workman she mistakes him for, while she kneels and reaches toward him and he raises a hand, the noli me tangere, touch me not, of the title. He signed and dated it 1651, at work in Amsterdam. The light comes low from the left, catching the two figures and the tomb while everything behind them sinks into shadow. The surface is thin and worn now. In the 1700s the canvas hung in a ducal palace room built out over a canal, and the damp did lasting harm before it came to Braunschweig.